A restaurant owner, Hazrat Khalid Khan, was sentenced to 30 months in prison and one year of supervised release in federal court in Boston for committing tax and insurance fraud involving 11 Boston-area restaurants, and for committing visa and immigration fraud. Also, he will be subject to deportation proceedings upon completion of his sentence. Khan was ordered to pay restitution of $2,343,155 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and $27,863 to two insurance companies he defrauded. The sentencing follows a multiagency investigation, which included Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

In April 2017, Khan pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the IRS, failing to collect and pay over taxes, committing mail fraud, making false statements on a naturalization application, and committing visa fraud.

Khan was the partial owner of 11 fried chicken takeout restaurants in greater Boston. As part of a tax fraud scheme that ran for years, Khan and his co-conspirators – generally the managers of these restaurants – defrauded the government and avoided paying payroll and income taxes owed by the stores. They paid their employees in cash and provided tax preparers with false information about the restaurants’ payroll and income, thereby causing the tax preparers to file false tax returns.

Khan repeatedly made false statements to obtain immigration benefits. Specifically, on two occasions – first in connection with obtaining legal permanent resident status and again when applying to naturalize as a U.S. citizen – Khan falsely denied that he had previously been arrested or convicted of a crime, when in fact, Khan had been previously convicted in federal court of alien smuggling.

This is an example of how criminal law and immigration law can work hand in hand. For more information on criminal violations in immigration law and many other issues related to employer immigration compliance, I invite you to read my new book, The I-9 and E-Verify Handbook, which is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/0997083379.